Golden Gate Bridge finish!

Another finish for the year! This time it's Debbie Patrick's Golden Gate Bridge. This project has been in the works since about May 2007 so it's one of my older projects and one that I blogged about here in 2007. I started it as my 'travel' project and in the early days mainly worked on it when my son was having his weekly tennis lesson. I found it very fiddly, though with frequent colour changes and lots of small patches of one colour. This made it difficult to work on as a 'pick up' project so when I re-planned my rotations this year I stuck it in as one of the rotations and that's worked out well.

So now (probably in a week or so) it's off to the craft shop to have this and the two Fabric Collectors framed. That will be great to get those all done!



Now I continue on with Cottages at Oak Bluffs II. Here a progress photo of that.

My birthday

Friday was my birthday so I finally got to open my Daylight Ultimate Floor Lamp! I put it together yesterday morning with some help from my son and now it's all in place and ready to use. It looks fabulous! Last night I was too tired to do any stitching after working in the afternoon so today will be my first opportunity to try it out. My family are all marvelling at the lamp especially about its attachments--the magnifying lens, clip to hold a pattern and the utility tray. The only thing it's really missing is a cup holder! I've been waiting to own a lamp like this for over 20 years.

Started Cottages at Oak Bluffs

OK cheating a bit here. I finished some of the backstitching on the bridge then realised I was running out of DMC356 (medium terracotta). Since I don't know how old some of my floss is I was wary about starting a new area with an old skein and then switching to a new skein in case there was a colour difference. So I started on the next project for this rotation until I get a chance to go to the craft shop and get more DMC. Then I ran into the same problem on cottages except this time I'm running out of DMC840 (medium beige brown). I've relied so long on my built up supplies of DMC that it's a bit of a shock to be running out of floss! Guess it's time to go shopping.

The colour descriptions for the floss are taken from this website: http://www.shopdmc.net/List%20of%20DMC%20colours.asp

Latrobe Terrace half finished

In just two rotations I've finished half of Latrobe Terrace. I can't believe it. I've never worked so quickly on one of these Juniper Designs street scenes. (And I've already completed five of them.) When I've worked on them in a dedicated way prior to using a rotation system one has taken me about 10 months to finish. Here I am only the equivalent of one month into this one and I'm half done (not counting backstitching). I'm getting sold on the rotation system.




Today is the first day of the Term 3 school holidays which means I'm on an even more irregular schedule than normal with ferrying the kids around. Jarrah has a couple of orthodontist appointments (today is actually his official treatment start date) and baseball training on Wednesdays. Jade has a busy gymnastics training schedule with more mornings than usual. Thank goodness Paul takes her for the 7am starts! I've also got work this Wednesday and my usual Saturday afternoon examinings this Saturday. So who knows what will get done this rotation? One good thing is that this is the final rotation on the Golden Gate Bridge and there's only backstitching to do. I've done a bunch today but there's heaps more with all of the bridge cables. I hope I have enough DMC356 to finish it all!

I'm going to make a list of all of the patterns and kits I have. It's going to be painful doing this because it's only going to highlight the impossibility of getting through it all.

We went to the Melbourne Show (actually the Royal Melbourne Agricultural Show--like a US State Fair) yesterday and I took a few photos of the kids. I thought I'd upload one of them in the animal nursery.

Good progress on Latrobe Terrace

I'm halfway through my Latrobe Terrace rotation and well into the building on the far right of the pattern. I have just a bit of foreground and background to do to finish this area and the whole right side of the design. And this is only my second rotation on this project. It's amazing how quickly it has gone in just 3 weeks! I can remember similar projects like this taking 10 months of dedicated work to finish. At the almost half-way mark I can't believe how fast this one is!

Yesterday I prepared the fabric for Cottages at Oak Bluffs II. I bound off the edges and made the centering lines. I'm going to do this one the same as Oak Bluffs I where I stitched both houses on the one piece of aida and then framed them as a set. The first one hangs in my son's room and looks great there. The second one will go in my daughter's room.

Today I ordered 5 new Barbara & Cheryl (of Verandas and Rainbow Row fame) patterns that I love. I inherited two from my mother but wanted to do some others as well. These will be waiting for me at my Dad's in the US when we go there for Christmas. The patterns I ordered are: The Garden Wall, Shady Afternoon (love the red and pink tones), Queen Street Alley, South Battery View and Ironwork Gate. I just discovered that the gate in Ironwork Gate is the one in another Barbara & Cheryl that I already have: Under the Oaks. I'll be doing one of my many Barbara & Cheryl patterns in the Verandas rotation once I have finished Verandas.

Fabric Collector #2 Finish!

I'm a week late writing this but I finished the second version of The Fabric Collector by stretching its rotation into a third week. I had really lost most of my interest in the project after already completing one but thought I should continue on and get it done so that I can take the two of them for framing at the same time and well before the Christmas rush. I'm just going to wait to finish the backstitching on the Golden Gate Bridge which I should do in its next rotation later this month and then I'll take all three for framing.

So here is the second Fabric Collector. I did a better job on this one in not making the couple of errors I made on the first one. But in comparing them they look pretty similar. At any rate, the two recipients--my sister and sister-in-law--don't live anywhere near each other so they'll never get the two of them side by side for comparison.



In extending one rotation by a week I decided to cut the rotation on New England Sampler by a week and so I have a photo of that also to show. I didn't put a lot of time into it over the week. I finished a couple of small buildings, the deer and some of the foreground to the centre of the sampler. It is coming along slowly.